


The Shopping Complex

by Lemon_Drizzle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Plus-Size Reader, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 16:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12915978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemon_Drizzle/pseuds/Lemon_Drizzle
Summary: The Reader has to buy new clothes for an undercover case, and she brings Gadreel along for company.





	The Shopping Complex

**Author's Note:**

> The title is kind of a...play on words. And if I totally mucked up Gadreel's character, I apologize.

“If you dislike purchasing things so much,” Gadreel brought up as I cursed under my breath for the fourth time that afternoon, “why are we here?”

“ _I_ am here because we have a new case, and I’m better at undercover work. And I am _here_ ,” I said tightly, gesturing harshly at the line of boutiques on either side of the mall’s indoor promenade, dreading the possibility of having to go into even one of the stores to find what I needed, let alone all of them, “because my G-gal duds just won’t cut it this time. And _you’re_ here because I wanted company and you looked like you were coming down with cabin fever.”

And because I would take any chance I could get to be around the guy, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. No siree, Bob.

“I’m not susceptible to human immunological ailments,” he reminded me blankly.

“It’s a…figure of speech,” I sighed, slinking through a doorway and into a store whose walls were just way too pink. After years of internalized misogyny, I had learned to like pink again, even love it sometimes, but not like this. This looked like the insides of a Pepto-Bismol bottle.

I stopped in my tracks, and Gadreel, eyes on the garish color scheme as well, collided with me in the entranceway, and I went sprawling. He grabbed my hand to keep me from falling and pulled me back. Already off-kilter, I lost my balance the other way around and crashed into his hard chest. Mortified beyond my wildest dreams, I savored the contact anyway. I would probably never get another chance to have my hands all over the angel.

I always wanted what I couldn’t have. In high school, it had been the captain of the football and basketball team. In college, it had been my resident adviser Isabelle. And out hunting mythological creatures with my found siblings the Winchesters, I had met and fallen for a divine being who wouldn’t love me back if I were the last person on earth.

Gosh, I really knew how to pick them.

“Are you okay?” he asked, staring down at me with his dark eyes.

“Um…”

“May I help you find something?” a young saleswoman asked the two weirdos at the front of the store.

“Definitely not,” I said, pushing Gadreel back the way we came and following him out. I hoped to Chuck we never ended up in this city—no, this _county_ —again, or I could very well spontaneously combust from the humiliation.

Leading Gadreel to another boutique some ways away from the pink nightmare, I noticed that our hands were still bound between us. The natural light fell through the high glass ceiling, sprinkled here and there with colored panes, and brightened the main concourse like something out of a fairytale. The line of fountains and large ferns certainly didn’t help. We could have been on a date.

I jerked my hand away and marched through the nearest doorway.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he found me browsing pin-striped blazers along a wall. “Was I squeezing too tightly? Sometimes I forget my own strength.”

“No, it’s just…” I pushed the hangers aside one by one as I tried to find my size. My broad shoulders were good for breaking through doors and knocking down the human subcategory of monsters, but they were awful for trying to fit into the average shirt or jacket. Technically, I was average, but try telling the Western fashion industry that. “It’s just that holding hands is kinda for…special friends.”

“Aren’t we special friends?” he asked, confused.

“Oh, you are definitely special, and we are friends, but it’s not the same thing.”

“I don’t understand.”

And I didn’t have the emotional energy to explain levels of intimacy and displays of affection to the angel I had been crushing on harder and harder ever since he came back into our lives.

“Ask Sam when we get back to the motel,” I dismissed, grabbing a blazer I thought might fit and stepping back to scan the store for trousers. As much as I had learned to like pink again, I would never feel comfortable in skirts or dresses. Even if my thighs didn’t chafe. Even if my hips and stomach didn’t bubble. I just couldn’t relax in them.

“If you tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I can help,” Gadreel mentioned.

“Anything that doesn’t make me look like a blimp,” I muttered, wrinkling my nose at the wide-legged pants. Those made me look awful.

“Technically, if you’re going to compare yourself to any dirigible,” he said, steering me toward a nearby rack, “you’d be rigid, like the Hindenburg.” At my blank stare, he folded one of his arms and flapped it like a chicken wing. “Because of your bone structure.”

I coughed out a laugh. I had asked him to come along in the first place because I liked spending time with him, and I was being a jerk with all this feeling sorry for myself. And he just wanted to be useful.

“Not that you need any validation from me, or anybody,” he said, picking through a bunch of pin-striped trousers that would go pretty well with my blazer, “but your line is very aesthetically pleasing. But you’re so much more than that too. You’re one of the best and bravest Hunters I’ve ever heard of. Your loyalty to your found family is enviable, and I don’t even know what envy feels like. And your taste in movies is so much more agreeable than Sam or Dean’s.”

I laughed again, feeling my cheeks warm in the air-conditioned shop.

“That reminds me. Your sense of humor is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered as well,” he continued, pulling a garment from the rack and slinging it over his shoulder. “Dean says you’re a terrible influence on me.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, unsure how to take a compliment, especially from him.

“Did you only need the one outfit?” he asked.

“No, I need something…” I clenched the blazer, feeling the fabric strain in my hands. “I need something pretty. A bunch of suits will do for the office job, but there’s the party in a couple weeks that we’re pretty sure is a cover for the summoning, and I need to dress up for that.”

“Okay.” He went through the store, along the walls and around the racks, picking up and setting down blouses, jackets, and trousers.

I followed him without choosing anything else myself. Honestly, I could use all the help I could get, even though I would have thought that Gadreel was as clueless about fashion as I was. He hadn’t been entirely correct earlier. It wasn’t that I didn’t like purchasing things—I did. I liked buying movies, music, alcohol. I could spend hours in a bookstore. I even enjoyed grocery shopping for the bunker.

I just hated buying clothes. I hated that things didn’t fit, and when they did, bits and bobs bulged. I hated that it cost way more to buy something in my size than was necessary, extra fabric costs be damned. I hated that boutiques that catered to plus-size— _average_ —people were few and far between. And worst of all, I hated that I cared.

“Would you like to try these on?” he wondered, holding out the clump of hangers.

I gaped at the number of things in his hands. “I can only bring seven items into the fitting room.”

“Take your time,” he said easily.

“Oh. Okay.” I grabbed as many garments from him as I could, and it was his turn to follow me as I made my way to the fitting rooms, dragging my feet all the way.

The store was busy on that Saturday afternoon, but Gadreel managed to find a seat among the spouses of the three other women trying on outfits.

The block of fitting rooms had its privacy, but sound carried. When another woman showed off something to someone I assumed was her husband, all he made was a noncommittal grunting noise, and from where I was looking at myself in a tri-panel mirror before going out to show Gadreel, I watched her slink back to the dressing rooms and latch herself in a stall.

I came out slowly, timid. What if Gadreel just grunted? What if he made a face? I knew he didn’t feel about me the way I felt about him, but such obvious judgment and rejection would destroy me.

His eyes grew wide as he looked me up and down, and my breath caught in my chest at his honest smile.

“You look very nice,” he said as I approached, getting out of his chair to take me in from all sides. “Very professional. How do you feel in it?”

“I feel like I’m in a straitjacket,” I grumbled. I liked the trousers—he had chosen a bunch of slim-leg styles that gathered in at the ankles, which made me look less like a house and more like a rhombus. I liked rhombuses. The blouse was okay—the neckline was actually kind of flattering. But the jacket. “The jacket’s too stiff. It’s not worn in like my others. And I have to start at the office on Monday. I’ll never break them all in by then.”

“Hmm. A stiff jacket isn’t safe in your line of work,” he understood. “You can’t run. You can’t fight. You probably couldn’t even aim your gun.”

The spouses pretended not to be eavesdropping. I tried to hide my smirk.

“How do you feel about cardigans?” Gadreel wondered. “Or is that too casual?”

“I love cardigans,” I said. “And if it’s too casual, they can shove it up their asses.”

“That doesn’t sound pleasant at all,” he mentioned, but I could see the hint of a smile on his lips, and it lit up my insides that he was beginning to understand figures of speech…with my help.

I giggled before I could stop myself, and his grin seemed to bloom now that I seemed to be enjoying myself.

“I’ll go find you some sweaters,” he volunteered. “You go try on the rest of the blouses and trousers.”

“I’m going to need new shoes too,” I grimaced, looking down at my scuffed ankle boots.

One of the men scoffed, and I could practically feel the other two rolling their eyes, no matter how unenthusiastic I sounded. I almost said something, but then they would have said something back, and I was just in the mood to really mess them up if it came down to it, and I didn’t need to cover up a black eye or split lip on my first day at the office. Gadreel would also feel compelled to step in, and he could _really_ hurt them.

“Let’s go somewhere else for those,” Gadreel said without argument.

“Agreed.”

I turned back to the fitting rooms and heard one of the men make a sound like a whip cracking. The meaning was not lost on me, but I let it go.

“ _Gesundheit_ ,” I heard Gadreel say cluelessly, thank Chuck, and I snickered into my hand.

I picked out a week’s worth of blouses and a few pairs of trousers that I could mix and match until the party.

Oh, shit, the party. The party where everyone was going to dress to impress, because one did not wear jeans to a demon summoning.

I was going to have to wear a skirt.

I slunk out to Gadreel, who already had a stack of comfortable-looking oversize cardigans.

“You can just try these on out here,” he said first. Then he noticed my face. “Y/N, what’s wrong?”

“I have to wear a dress to the party,” I told him, trying not to throw up.

“Why do you have such an aversion to dresses?” he wondered, setting the sweaters on his chair.

“I don’t know. I don’t look good in them. They bulge everywhere. I’m always afraid my underwear is showing, no matter how long it is.” I heard one of the men snigger and then try to hide it in a cough, and I came the closest I ever did to punching him before stopping myself. “I just feel so…vulnerable in them.”

“Would a jumpsuit be fancy enough to blend in?” he inquired.

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “I’ve never worn one before.”

“If I may…” He held up a finger. “You stay here and try on the sweaters. I’ll be right back.”

He left me there and wandered to the front of the store.

“Think she’d rent him out to my wife next weekend?” one of the spouses asked another. “I’ve got season tickets to State, and they’re 4-0.”

They laughed to themselves, and I just felt sorry for them. I felt worse for their girlfriends or wives.

I had brought out the blouses and trousers I would buy by the time Gadreel came back. My heart dropped when he held out a black jersey dress. The scoop neckline and form-fitting elbow-length sleeves were nice. And the high-low skirt was interesting, but it ended above my knee. And I just knew my stomach and hips were going to be all over the place in this thing.

“Gadreel…”

“Here, try these with it.” He held up a pair of floral leggings with solid black along the sides. “They have something called a…control top. That’s supposed to help with the bulging.”

The guys behind me were acting like children again, and it was hard to keep ignoring them. I was so angry, I could have cried.

“And…” He turned the leggings around to show me the hanger behind it, and seeing the black jumper made me feel a little better. “In case you’re still uncomfortable in dresses.”

His consideration for my feelings but also trying to get me out of my comfort zone made my eyes well up.

“Th…thanks, Gadreel,” I said slowly, taking a black cardigan with me into the fitting rooms as well, in case I thought layers or covering up would improve things.

I tried the jumpsuit first. As self-conscious as I was, I had to admit that I looked pretty good. It had a sweetheart neckline with a patchwork lace grid for the neck and arms. And the legs tapered in at the ankles again. Gadreel seemed to know me better than I knew myself. I didn’t even try the sweater with it.

I was undressing to give the dress a chance when one of the men—that same instigator—opened his mouth again.

“If I wanted to watch women dress up, I’d watch the Vicky’s Secret Fashion Show,” he said loudly. “It’s on YouTube, you know.”

If his wife couldn’t hear him before, she could now. And if I weren’t in my underwear, I would have gone out there and kicked him in the head. Or lower.

“My girlfriend is picking out a dress for a baby shower,” another one chimed in. “I’m not even gonna see her in it. So, what the hell am I doing here?”

“Mine’s buying something for her cousin’s engagement party,” the third man shared. “But I’ve got paintball with the guys, so I’m gonna have to go into the office, if you know what I mean.”

As they guffawed from the next room, I wondered if they would be so candid, if they knew their _in_ significant others could hear every hurtful word.

“Don’t you like your spouses?” Gadreel asked them, and I cursed under my breath and started to pull on the dress and leggings to get out there and diffuse whatever was going to happen.

I really didn’t need to get arrested today. Arraignment court didn’t even open until Monday. I couldn’t be in jail when I was supposed to start a new undercover job with white-collar demonic cultists.

“Hey, I love my wife, asshole,” the most outspoken of them said defensively.

“Then why don’t you like spending time with her?”

“I spend time with her. I take her out to dinner. And to movies. We watch the game together, and she rubs my feet.”

“Isn’t taking an interest in each other’s interests part of a meaningful relationship?”

“Hey, I don’t need to take an interest in everything,” Baby Shower said. “I babysit the kids while she goes grocery shopping. And when she goes to her book club.”

I opened my mouth to shout out at him, but Gadreel took the words right out my mouth.

“It’s not babysitting when they’re your children,” he said slowly, and I heard something dark in his voice that made me wish I could get dressed faster than the klutz that I was.

“Listen, buddy,” Engagement Party said, “don’t lecture us on relationships just ‘cause you’re so pussy-whipped, you can’t see what a cow you’re dating.”

My hands froze where they were trying to pull the control top over my belly, and I sank to the bench in the stall with a choked sigh. The fucking jerk had brought my body into it.

“I don’t romantically fraternize with livestock,” Gadreel said. “Bestiality is against my Father’s command, and I happen to agree with Him on that point.”

Somehow, I managed to smile through my tears.

“And if you’re referring to the young woman I’m with,” he said, eerily calm, “as some sort of low-class insult, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

I got to my feet, smoothed the dress without looking at myself in the mirror, and unlatched the door. The other women were standing around the corner from the men, in clothes with the tags hanging off of them, listening in without giving away that they were listening in. They turned to me as I approached the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, taking responsibility for Gadreel’s confrontation.

“No, we are,” one of them said as quietly, taking my arm gently to stop me from going out there just yet.

“I think you ought to be ashamed of how you treat women in general,” Gadreel was saying, “and especially how you treat the women in your lives.”

“Hey, asshole—”

“No, you’re the asshole,” Gadreel cut off the first guy. “Sit down.”

He must have listened, because I didn’t hear any scuffling.

“If you don’t cherish your spouse and every moment you have together in your short human lives, why did you get married? And why did you have kids with her? And why are you even with her at all?”

The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up, and I realized that he was using his Grace on them. Which was stupid, because he was still replenishing from when he had lost it.

I looked to the other women and saw that they had their heads down and eyes closed. Gadreel’s Grace was reaching them too.

“The average life expectancy for the White American male is 78 years 9 months. You are all White American males. You are all average.”

One of the men harrumphed in protest, but that was all the fight he had left in him.

“You’re going to go home with your women and think about how you have behaved toward them and all the others,” Gadreel instructed clearly. “And you are either going to change your ways, or you are going to lose the only ones who can tolerate you. Look upon yourselves and see the error of your ways, or you doom yourselves as well as you doom humankind.”

I stepped around the corner before he went too far, and his eyes swept over me, his expression instantly changing from one of somber lecture to pleasant wonder. “Oh, Y/N, you look like a goddess.” To the others, he told, “Get out.”

The men raised their heads as if waking from a trance—I had never had Grace used on me before, so I didn’t know how it felt—and the women stepped out from the fitting rooms.

“That looks good on you, hon,” the first guy said to his wife. “We’ll get it if you want it, but we should really be heading home now.”

“You look real pretty,” Engagement Party told his girlfriend. “Are any of my shirts good enough to match, or should we stop somewhere else on the way home and get me something? I want to look nice for your family.”

“You look smoking in that dress,” Baby Shower said to his girlfriend. “Shame I’m not going to see it on you. We should go out to dinner tomorrow night. That restaurant you really like.”

Without saying anything, the women went back to change into their own clothes, and the men stood around in a daze, ignoring me and Gadreel.

“When is that going to wear off?” I questioned.

“When they’ve done as I’ve instructed and thought about what they’ve done,” he replied simply. “Whether it becomes a blessing or a curse is up to them.”

I rolled my eyes. “You can’t turn every asshole into a decent human being.”

“I wouldn’t want to. The onus lies on them. That’s what being human is all about.” He shook his head. “But I noticed how they’ve been acting toward you and their partners ever since we got here, even if you liked to pretend I hadn’t, and the shitheads needed to be taught a lesson.”

“Okay, who taught you that word?” I demanded.

“I heard Dean say it last night at the bar,” he said. “Based on similar context, I assumed I was using it correctly.”

“Oh, they’re definitely shitheads,” I agreed. “You’re just so…” What, innocent? Yeah, right. Naïve? As if. Chaste? Oh, Chuck only knew. “You’re so not Dean.”

“No, of course I’m not.” He stepped back to look me over again. “But all you need is a bow and quiver, and you would be Artemis incarnate.”

Never one to be able to take a compliment, I blushed and looked at the floor. But from this angle, it was hard for me to find a bulge that shouldn’t have been there.

Anyway, I had to stop using my looks as a way to measure up as a person. I was a badass Hunter who could kick some serious butt—even in this dress—and that’s what really counted, right?

“Are you still uncomfortable in skirts?” Gadreel asked as we watched each of the couples check out and leave the store. “Have you tried on the jumpsuit?”

“I did. I liked it. But…I kinda like this better,” I admitted.

“Really?” he wondered. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn that he was almost proud of my personal growth that afternoon.

“Don’t think I’m going to start wearing them every day,” I warned, and he held up his hands. “But thinking about wearing one doesn’t make me want to throw up and die anymore, so that’s something.”

“Yes, it is.”

“The leggings really do help,” I said, spinning on my toes so my skirt flared out. “No chafing. No flashing.”

“You should wear it to the shoe store,” he grinned. “It would help picking out shoes.”

“You know, you’re right.”

Shoe shopping was a piece of cake compared to choosing office-wear and the party dress. A newer, cleaner rehash of my ankle boots worked well with both the trousers and the leggings, and we were out of there in ten minutes.

On our way through the mall and back to the car, I couldn’t help noticing the stares from the other shoppers. If being as observant as I was weren’t necessary to staying alive as a Hunter, I would have thought it an unfortunate skill—under the circumstances, I considered it unfortunate anyway.

I wouldn’t have cared if they were only looking at me—I was used to it. But they were looking at Gadreel, with his tall, trim stature and Roman good looks, compared to me and my stout frame, and were no doubt wondering what the hell we were doing together. Even if we weren’t together-together—that was unthinkable. No, that someone like him would even spend time with me platonically must have been as confusing as a Rubik’s cube or President Cheeto’s unwavering base popularity.

If I hadn’t changed back into my street clothes in the restroom, if I had still been wearing the dress, I would have torn it off my body and stomped on it with my dirty shoes for even thinking it made a difference. And I couldn’t yank it out of the bag and throw it to the ground, because that was the bag Gadreel was carrying.

As if sensing what I wanted to do the damn dress, he changed his grip from the inside hand to the outside, out of my reach.

“Would you like to find a shooting range now, instead of going straight back to the motel?” he asked as we stepped outside.

“Actually, that would improve today by, like, a million,” I admitted. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I know you don’t like guns.”

“Thank you for thinking of me,” he smiled. “I don’t like using them myself, but I like how happy you are during target practice.”

“That’s sweet, Gadreel,” I said point-blank.

When he kept staring down at me with his small grin, I made myself turn away and look around for the car.

“I think I know what special friends are,” he brought up.

“Oh, yeah?” I said, only half-listening while I tried to remember where I parked.

“Yeah, I don’t need to ask Sam,” he said. When I didn’t press him on it, he continued, “I think they’re what those couples were pretending to be. But they got lost somewhere along the way.”

“That’s an interesting way of putting it,” I remarked. “You’re not wrong, I guess.”

“I think we could be special friends,” he said, and I froze in the crosswalk like a deer in headlights.

Gadreel stopped beside me, with the same small smile on his face, and I couldn’t move or say anything until an SUV pulled up and honked at us.

“We’re not those couples,” I told him, walking fast, walking anywhere, even though I was lost in the Chuck-forsaken parking lot.

“No, of course we aren’t,” he agreed, grabbing my arm and stopping me on a patch of grass with a recently transplanted sapling, where we weren’t likely to be interrupted by a rushed soccer mom. “But what they aspire to… Don’t you think that’s already us?”

What did he mean by that?

“What do you mean by that?”

Smooth, Y/N.

“Forgive me for being so forthright,” he soothed, “but after speaking with those men, I can’t hold my feelings in any longer.” He released a deep breath. “I like you. I really like you.”

“Eep,” I said oh, so suavely. Suddenly, the bag of shoes was just too heavy in my hand, and it dropped with a soft thud to the ground.

“My favorite part of the day is when I can spend it with you. Even when we’re just running to the store for beer and pie,” he went on, and I laughed quietly with him. “I know today was rough on you. But thank you for bringing me.”

“You’re welcome,” my Midwestern manners made me whisper automatically.

“I don’t know what love feels like, but the affinity I feel for you is stronger than what I feel for any other person, or even my siblings. I had no idea I was even capable of feeling this way. Then I found the Winchesters again…and there you were. Such an _amazing_ human being. How could I not?”

I opened my mouth to give him a hundred reasons, but he set his shopping bag on the grass and framed my face with his slender fingers, gently smoothing his thumbs over my cheekbones, and the tenderness in the gesture shut me right up.

“Even if you couldn’t ever reciprocate what I feel for you,” he said, “I’ve cherished every moment we’ve ever had together.”

Say something, stupid!

“I infinity you too,” I said breathlessly.

“There’s that sense of humor,” he chuckled patiently.

“I think I’ve infinity’d you since the day we met,” I told him. I had to break up our confessions with levity, or my heart would implode.

Gadreel used his conveniently placed hands to tilt my head so that he could step forward and press his lips to mine. I clenched my fingers in the front of his unzipped hoodie and held him to me until we both had to catch our breath a heated moment later.

“I take it we don’t have to go to the gun range anymore?” he assumed, wrapping his arms around my shoulders.

“Oh, we definitely still have to go,” I argued, hugging him around his waist.

“Oh? Why?”

“Because I have all this blood, adrenaline, and relief pumping through my veins now,” I shared. “I’m a bundle of nerves and unexpended energy. And the thin motels walls are a disgrace to the construction trade, so we won’t be able to explore this _infinity_ for each other to the…” I swallowed a lump in my throat, “fullest extent until we get back to the bunker. In two weeks.”

“Oh,” he realized. “Well…can we at least hold hands while we look for the car you’ve apparently lost?”

I grumbled and tried to push away from him, but he kissed my hair and held me fast, and I had to forgive him for his teasing. I was really rubbing off on him. And standing in his arms on that warm and sunny afternoon, I tried not to think about how long we had to wait until we were alone and could, you know, rub off on each other.


End file.
